Unharmed
by repmetsyrrah
Summary: Clark is six the first time his parents realize just how different he really is.


**A/N:** Written for the ES.c FicGrab prompt, Stuck. Written with SR in mind but I took Clark's landing from the comics (i.e. he didn't lift the truck). My second attempt at writing little Clark. Let's see if lightening strikes twice.

**Unharmed **

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Martha Kent's perfectly normal and relaxing Wednesday afternoon baking pies was interrupted suddenly and unexpectedly as her husband came banging into the house, not even taking his muddy boots off as he hurried into the kitchen.

"Jonathan," she started, her hands on her hips and ready to berate him for making such a mess, "how many- what is it?"

"Clark-" he started, but his tone are the expression on his face was enough that Martha didn't wait a second more before she ran straight out the door to find her son.

"Mom!" a small but urgent voice was calling from the tall old oak beside the barn. "_Mommy_!"

"Clark!' she cried, reaching the tree and finally understanding what had her husband so concerned, "what are you _doing_ up there?" she called, horrified to find her baby boy clinging precariously to a thin tree branch a good fifteen feet above her head.

"I can't get down," Clark called back, sounding close to tears as he struggled to hold on to the branch he had in his grasp.

"I've got the ladder," Jonathan called, hurrying towards them, dragging his old folding ladder behind him.

Before he could even unfold it though there was a snap and a scream from above their heads.

She knew it was only a figure of speech but Martha would swear for the rest of her life her heart literally stopped in her chest as her son tumbled from the tree, still clutching the broken branch in his hand.

"_Clark!_" she screamed, moving as fast as only a mother protecting her child could.

It wasn't fast enough though, Clark hit the ground with a dusty thud.

Martha threw herself down beside him, fighting the urge to pick him up and possibly cause more harm but before the dust cleared Clark had moved himself, clambering to his feet and bursting into tears before throwing himself at his mother.

Martha was to stunned to do anything but hug him back as Jonathan joined them. "Clark, are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm sorry," Clark sobbed, pulling away from Martha and wiping his eyes, "I didn't mean to go so high."

"It's okay, sweetie," Martha assured him, "are you hurt?"

Clark shook his head, wiping away his tears. "I'm sorry," he repeated.

Martha just stared at her son in disbelief, she looked to her husband for some explanation of how a six year old boy could fall fifteen feet onto hard ground and be unharmed only to be meet with a look of identical confusion. He glanced back up at the tree branch then back to his son on the ground.

"Clark are you sure you're alright?" he asked.

Clark nodded again, trying not to cry as he apologised again. "I'm sorry," he said in a small voice, "I wanted to get higher than the barn."

"We're not angry, son," Jonathan told him, sounding a lot more calm than Martha felt. "You just gave us a very big fright."

It seemed all Clark himself had gotten from his adventure had been a fright as well. After a few more hugs and promises that he wouldn't try and go so high again he was back to his usual, happy self.

Martha however, was far from normal.

She tried to continue her baking but she couldn't help reliving the moment her son had fallen and trying to understand what had happened. He had fallen from so high and yet there wasn't even a scratch or bruise anywhere to be seen.

It couldn't have been pure luck. Luck was falling from a tree and breaking your arm instead of your back not coming away without even a graze, especially a six year old.

"Mom?" Clark called, "Have you seen my pencils?" he asked, coming into the kitchen, looking perfectly normal. But normal children didn't fall from trees and just get back up, normal children got hurt, normal children had boo-boos for their Mom to kiss better.

"They're in the living room," Martha said, noticing Clark was looking at her oddly.

Clark hurried off to find his pencils and complete his homework- a drawing of what he wanted to do in the upcoming holidays. Martha hoped he didn't want to climb any more trees.

Suddenly, she recalled a moment last year when they had gone to Metropolis to visit her father. Clark had been five, he'd been going through a phase of trying to do everything himself, he'd slipped, she remembered, just as he'd gotten out of the car. He'd been unharmed then too, but it had only been from the car and Martha had put it down to luck.

Then just last month, another memory came to her mind, he'd dropped a spoon into the hot jam he'd been helping Martha make and, before she could stop him, had reached in to pull it out. She reasoned that the jam mustn't have been boiling as she'd thought and forgotten.

Until now.

"Martha?" Jonathan called, coming in and this time remembering to take his boots off.

"In here," she called, shaking herself from her memories.

He smiled as he walked into the kitchen, kissing her hello and sitting down heavily. "How is he?' he asked, looking towards the living room where Clark sat, his tongue poking out from between his teeth as he very carefully coloured in the lake and tent he had outlined on the paper.

"I don't think he can be hurt," Martha said.

To her surprise Jonathan didn't seem the least bit surprised by her statement. "No," he agreed, "I don't think so either."

Martha was about to ask if he'd been remembering the same incidents as she had when Clark came rushing in. "Look what I did," he announced proudly, holding up his drawing. "It's the lake me an' Dad went to."

"It's beautiful, son," Jonathan announced, taking the drawing and admiring it, "a true work of art."

Martha nodded, looking at Clark's hands as he pointed out the various details in his picture. She had held them just that morning as she walked him across the street to school. They had felt so soft, like a normal child, but what if she was right? They felt soft but they were unharmed by heat and sharp rocks on the ground.

"Mom?" Clark asked, turning to her, "can we go camping next holidays?"

"We'll see, dear," Martha responded automatically, wondering if the events of today had something to do with why Clark had never complained about getting shampoo in his eyes when she had given him baths. All the other mothers had talked about it, Martha had just wondered if they weren't being careful enough.

She tried to put it out of her mind, but she couldn't. Jonathan and her had come to an unspoken agreement they should discuss it until after Clark was asleep as the boy didn't seem to understand what had really happened that afternoon.

"Don't lick your knife, Clark," she told him as he tried to get all the gravy he could off it. She couldn't bring herself to tell him he might hurt himself when it probably wasn't even true.

As it was a school night Clark was in bed early and Martha and Jonathan tucked him in like they did every night.

Jonathan said his goodnights and then went downstairs to let in the cat before she scratched her way through the screen door.

Martha hugged Clark gently and smoothed out the sheets. "Good night," she said, turning to leave.

"Mommy?" Clark asked suddenly.

"Yes?" she asked, turning back.

"Are you still mad at me because I climbed the tree?" he asked, looking at her with his big, blue eyes full of confusion. "I'm really sorry."

Martha felt her heart clench and wanted to cry as she suddenly realised how truly stupid she was being. It wasn't Clark's fault he was different, it wasn't his fault he had fallen from the sky with no explanation. And it certainly wasn't his fault his own mother had been too much of a fool to notice she was treating him differently for something he had no control over.

"I'm sorry, sweetie," she apologised, leaning forward and giving him a proper hug of the kind a mother should give her son at night, "you did nothing wrong, I've just got a few things on my mind. Nothing for you to worry about though," she assured him, kissing him on the forehead. "I love you," she told him, tucking him in and getting up to turn out the lights and thinking what a terrible mother she had been to treat him any different that afternoon.

"I love you too, Mom," he replied, apparently satisfied with her excuses, "good night."

She closed the door and made it all the way to the kitchen before she had to sit down. "Martha?" Jonathan asked, his voice full of worry as his wife started crying.

"I'm okay," she said as he sat down beside her and pulled her close. "He's only six, Jonathan," she told him, "he doesn't understand."

"I know, Martha, I know," he assured her, "but we do," he told her firmly as he pulled away, taking her hands in his and looking her straight in the eyes, "we do and we can help him."

"He's never been hurt," she reminded him, "all those times I just thought he was lucky but now," she sighed and wiped away the last of her tears, "now I can't ignore it anymore."

"He can't be hurt," Jonathan completed her unspoken thoughts. "We always knew he wasn't exactly going to be the most normal of children," he reminded her gently.

He turned his hand over and held hers tightly as he looked up the staircase where his son, the boy who fell from the sky, was sleeping soundly, having been tucked in by the only parents he had ever known.

"Do you think this is normal?" Jonathan asked, "For his people?"

"I don't know," Martha answered, shaking her head. "We may never know."

"No one else can either," Jonathan sighed, "we always knew he wasn't from around here but now we know he has less in common with us than we thought."

"He's too young," Martha told her husband, thinking of her poor, beautiful boy who didn't understand how different he was just yet, "he's too young to be worrying about things like that."

"Then we'll do it for him," Jonathan promised firmly.

Martha nodded, trying not to think about how they were going to explain to their son that he couldn't tell anyone he feel out of a tree and didn't get hurt, how he could probably never play dangerous games, not because he might get hurt, but because he might not. That some people weren't as nice as the ones in Smallville and might want to take him away from his parents because he was so different.

She never thought having a child who couldn't be hurt would be more stressful than worrying about one who could but when she thought of her smiling son, with his messy mop of dark hair and bright eyes that were just a bit too blue, she knew, with all the strange things that he did, from falling from the sky to falling from a tree, she wouldn't have traded him in for all the Earth.

Or, she thought, remembering the strange craft that had delivered her son to her, any of the worlds beyond.

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Reviews are love!


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